It is the “selling shit back to us” specifically, not the “scraping,” that’s the unethical part. If the AI companies were doing the same scraping (and destructive rare book scanning, for that matter), but were using the data to populate archive.org, would it still be a problem? I would argue “no.”
I think it would be a problem because the scrapers are hammering all types of websites from small forums to reddit with tens of thousands of unique ip addresses at a time. Websites that have neither the money, hardware, or protection had to figure out solutions really quick or suffer what is essentially a constant ddos attack. This is the reality of the web now, it’s just an incredibly hostile place.
It is the “selling shit back to us” specifically, not the “scraping,” that’s the unethical part. If the AI companies were doing the same scraping (and destructive rare book scanning, for that matter), but were using the data to populate archive.org, would it still be a problem? I would argue “no.”
I think it would be a problem because the scrapers are hammering all types of websites from small forums to reddit with tens of thousands of unique ip addresses at a time. Websites that have neither the money, hardware, or protection had to figure out solutions really quick or suffer what is essentially a constant ddos attack. This is the reality of the web now, it’s just an incredibly hostile place.